England- Matthew Hopkins Flashcards
How many witches were killed in England, 1500-1700?
Around 500.
What sources were used to show the witchcraft activity?
Trial records
Pamphlets- published after witchcraft executions. Around 140 survived.
Most trial records lost, have to rely on pamphlets, which were mainly moralising tales.
Where were most witchcraft cases dealt with prior to 1542?
Ecclesiastical courts- focused on atonement and penance rather than harsh punishment.
Guilty often ordered to attend parish church, wearing a white sheet and carrying a wand, promising to lead a reformed life.
Few witchcraft cases.
Where were witchcraft cases involving secular crimes, such as fraud and treason dealt with?
Secular courts, most English monarchs faced treason and sorcery plots.
Prior 1542, give an example of a treason involved witchcraft case.
Henry VI’s reign, Margery Jourdemayne burned for conspiring against King using sorcery.
What was the 1542 Act?
Witchcraft became a capital crime, yet no evidence that it was ever enforced.
Repealed in 1547.
What was the 1563 Act?
Passed under reign of Elizabeth I
- Killing people by witchcraft punishable by death.
- Injuring people or animals, damaging goods by witchcraft punishable by years imprisonment first offence, death second.
What inspired the 1563 Act?
A group of Catholic plotters were discovered using sorcery against Elizabeth’s Protestant regime. Gov realised there was no law to try them.
From 1563- secular law dominated.
What did the 1604 Act do?
Made injuring people through witchcraft a capital offence on the first.
Using dead bodies for sorcery is a capital offence.
What book did Reginald Scot write? What did it say?
‘The Discoverie of Witchcraft’ 1584.
Calvinist, sceptical of notion of witchcraft because:
- Believed in sovereignty of God, so wrong to attribute supernatural power to witches.
- Could find no biblical foundation for witch-hunting.
Name three pro-witchcraft texts.
A Treatise Against Witchcraft (1590), Henry Holland, clergyman.
Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft (1608), William Perkins, Puritan theologian.
A Guide to Grand Jury Men with Respect to Witches (1627), Richard Bernard, Puritan.
All key religious figures.
What is meant by a godly commonwealth?
A godly nation, extirpating witchcraft was a part of this process as well as getting rid of ‘superstitious’ beliefs and practices.
Most wanted the rituals of the Catholic church gone.
What does Sharpe say about the paradoxical beliefs in Witchcraft?
It was a ‘plurality of possible positions’.
Some believed, some sceptical.
Describe the role of cunning folk in Essex.
Elizabethan period, no village in Essex more than 10 miles from a ‘cunning’ person, large proportion male.
Services:
- Providing medicine for the sick.
- Help identify who is bewitching people.
Considered a good thing, but many preachers disagreed.
Richard Bernard- ‘all witches, in truth, are bad witches’.
What was the role of alchemy and astrology?
Widespread acceptance of reality of magic made many believe in the existence of witchcraft.
John Dee became Elizabeth’s court astrologer, identifying best date for coronation.
Doctors used horoscopes to identify best medicine and treatment.
What was the impact of classical culture and intellectuals?
Education for training clergymen restricted to Latin and Greek, which has overt references to Witchcraft.
Dramatists would also use this education, best example is Shakespeare’s witch scene in Macbeth, 1606.
These beliefs evident on Justices of the Peace.
What was the impact of the Reformation in England?
Superstition against Catholicism grew, adopted belief in power of rituals, not far removed from methods of cunning folk.
They would bless people, use the relic of the cross.
Protestants saw Catholics as witches.
When was the English Civil War?
1642-6.
What was the impact of the Puritanism on England?
By seventeenth century, Puritans at odds with Anglican church, seeing it as too papist.
In Civil War, Puritans defeated Charles I and Oliver Cromwell rules until death in 1658, strict Puritan.
Historians think that Puritans were more likely to prosecute witches than Anglican church.
Most serious witch hunt in England, 1645-7 was in an area dominated by Protestantism.
Why do some historians dispute the connection between witch-hunting and Puritanism?
Some Puritans, like William Perkins, ordered for the extirpation of witches, yet others were more cautious.
Some accepted views of Reginald Scot, many misfortunes ascribed to devil were actually from God’s providence.
Macfarlane, assessing prosecutions in Essex, could fine no link to Puritanism.
Oliver Cromwell made no mention of witchcraft in his speeches.
What were the socio-economic influences of witchcraft in England?
Key population growth. 1530-1630, 2.5 million to 5 million. Employment crisis, flooded labour market, people became dependent on wage labour. Increased poverty.
Yet, rising bread prices meant enhanced profits for those selling. Macfarlane (1970) points out that there was therefore a social divide, causing mass tension in Essex.
1560-1660, more prosperous were concerned as to how to deal with poor, saw them as a growing nuisance.
Why can MacFarlane’s Essex model be disputed?
Fits Essex, but not other areas such as Kent, Hertfordshire and Surrey, that saw little persecution but were going through the same changes.
Why was the English legal process different to most of Europe?
The determination of guilt or innocence was left to a trial jury.
Where and why were most of the witchcraft accusations in Essex?
Rural communities, less desirable person could be seen more easily than in a town.
410 out of 460 witchcraft cases in Essex had accused and victim from same village.
What was the process of bringing a suspected witch to trial?
In rural communities, a complaint made to a JP, who would question accused and accuser and draw out information useful to court of assize, written in pre-trial document.
Commit them to trial or send them home.
Sent to gaol, could be up to six months depending on court cycle.
What were the assize courts?
Judges (appointed by Crown) from three courts in Westminster would hear criminal cases at assizes, a way of bringing central justice to localities, twice a year in Jan. and mid-summer.
So, in face of war, disrupted.
What was the assize process?
Evidence presented to grand jury to determine if they should go to trial.
Suspected given no defence lawyer.
Assizes only happened twice a year, so a lot to get through, yet trials only lasted 15-20 minutes, most complex cases 30 minutes.
Defendant presumed guilty unless proven otherwise.
What magical evidence was accepted in the assize courts?
- Suspects association with animal can be interpreted as entertaining a familiar.
- If contact with suspected followed by mishap.
- Witches marks.
- On occasion, spectral evidence.
What evidence suggests that the assize courts dealt with witchcraft cases well?
South-eastern counties, only 22% of those accused were sentenced to death.
What were most people scared of as opposed to the Devil’s pact?
Maleficium.
How many people were witches accused of killing in Essex?
1560-1680, 233, 108 illness, 80 harming or killing animals.
Six charged with harming property.
What does the ‘tyranny of local opinion’ mean?
Neighbours accused witches if they disliked them. Magic was used as evidence, so down to opinion of local majority.
Why was witchcraft a rural phenomenon?
Most people lived in the countryside.
London, 150,000 people 1500-500,000 people 1700 was England’s largest town.
Few towns had more than 10,000 people.
Norwich, England’s second largest town, population of 30,000 by 1700.
Why did gossip contribute heavily to witchcraft accusations?
In village communities, everyone knew one another. Those who stood out as offenders swiftly punished.
More frequent offenders labelled as ‘scolds’, ‘a troublesome angry woman’ who caused ‘increase public discord’.
Reginald Scott says the ‘chief fault’ of witches ‘is that they are scolds’.
Gossip frequent, so when misfortunes happen, acts associated with witchcraft brought up.
A local reputation, says Thomas is ‘the making of a witch’.
Who did MacFarlane think were most likely to be accused and were most likely to accuse?
Wives of labourers accused by yeomen families. Taking a witch to court was expensive.
So Sharpe says a plaintiff had to be ‘unusually confident’.
What was the female stereotype of witchcraft accusations?
Macfarlane’s witchcraft- 90% women. Generally elderly.
John Gaule- ‘every old woman…is not only suspected, but pronounced a witch’.
Single women vulnerable, without guidance of a husband, didn’t have willpower to resist Devil’s wishes.
Most suspected witches poor, far more women at bottom of social scale.
Elderly women prone to eccentric behaviour, senility. Easier to get confessions.
Accused witches had usually asked a neighbour for food, money and been denied, left cursing, followed by a misfortune.
Why were male witches accused?
Husbands or children, guilt by association.
William Perkins- ‘witches are wont to communicate their skill to others by tradition’.
What was the female involvement in witchcraft accusations?
- Inter-female rivalries common in rural life.
- Witchcraft accusations most effective means that women could express power in male-dominated society.
- At centre of accusations were children, childcare regarded as female activity.
- Evidence of south-eastern counties assize circuit suggests that women fifteen times more likely to present evidence in witchcraft cases, rather than any other felony.
When was the first English witch trial resulting in a hanging?
1566, Chelmsford Essex.
Rush of similar trials followed, witch panic accentuated by discovery of 1578 of plot to kill Queen Elizabeth by magic.
Full scale investigation launched by Privy council.
Panic, Essex became known s ‘home of English witch-hunting’, says Sharpe.
Why did witchcraft accusations decline by the end of the Elizabethan reign?
Whitgift (archbishop of Canterbury) provided a religious settlement including popery and radical Protestantism, known as Arminianism.
Continued by Richard Bancroft, by 1590s, Anglican hierarchy sceptical about demonic possession.
When and who was involved in ‘The Boy of Burton’?
1596, Robert Toone of Burton in Staffordshire went hunting with nephew, Thomas Darling.
What happened to Thomas Darling?
He got ill, said green cats had been tracking him and he saw green angels. Darlings family thought he was bewitched.
Confirmed when he said Thomas claimed an old woman cursed him.
Who was thought to have bewitched Thomas Darling?
Elizabeth Wright, known by neighbours as Witch of Stapenhill.
But others claimed she was too old to be wandering the woods, most likely 60 year old daughter, Alice Gooderidge.
Searched for Devil’s mark, visited Thomas and had a seizure in her presence. Imprisoned and eventually confessed.
Died in prison.
Who did Thomas’ family appoint to heal him?
Puritan preacher, John Darrell who had a reputation for healing ‘possessed’. Said he was possessed by two evil spirits, Thomas recovered.
Case made Darrel famous, was called on to perform other practices, one in Nottingham. Apparently cured William Somers, who named thirteen women as witches.
